Here’s a little bit of what UH athletic director Mack Rhoades had to say about why UH decided to refresh its logos and marks at this time:

“A great day for Houston athletics. So much has happened over the past three years and all the successes, not just with the athletics department but certainly with the university, Tier One status, the new conference on the horizon, new facilities on the horizon, record-breaking academic achievement, increased ticket sales, revenues and just an overall sense of pride about this university and about this athletics department.

“People ask why? Why now, why a refresh in terms of the logo? That’s why. We felt like as we continue to grow and we continue to move forward and to become part of a national stage — and certainly we think that will happen with the Big East and it’s already begun to happen that we need a bold and a brand new identity but without forgetting our past, because we’ve had such great, great tradition.

“So when you look at the ‘block UH’ we felt like we needed to stay relatively close to that because of the great brand equity. And we worked with LRG (Licensing Resource Group), our licensing partner, and they were terrific. We really felt that we needed to stay close to it but we needed a cleaner look, we needed to refresh it, adding the beveled look to it we felt like it was more modernized.”

Here’s a video put together by the UH athletics staff regarding the logo change: